All the treasures of my life
Are right here in my hand.
~ "Colors Grace" Potter & The Nocturals
It was just a glass of wine, one.
He had nursed it throughout the evening. Turning down another with a smile when Brooke offered.
He had been content with just the one he told her and watching another as she floated around the room, at least to him it seemed as if she was. He could even tell she had been faking the smile she wore, nodding at what he assumed had been just the right time and he couldn't help but wink when her gaze had shifted his way and that smile she wore, drifted to her eyes.
He should have been mingling or at least standing beside her listening to another editor tell him how happy they were he had finally published another book. But he wasn't.
Instead he had watched her from across the room, wondering how he had gotten so lucky to have her in his life, nursing that one glass of wine. She hadn't wanted to come and he knew that. Told him she hadn't been feeling well but she came anyways because she loved him. And it was his night, his time to shine she had said.
She slipped on that simple black dress that clung to her curves in just the right way, styled her hair just right and kissed their daughters forehead with a faint goodnight and love you forever falling from her lips before following him out of the house and into that old vintage mustang.
He told her he loved her and he'd make it up to her and she had simply smiled, leaned across the seat and pressed her lips to his temple with a whispered you better and a smile.
That had been hours earlier and that one glass of wine felt good going down; smooth and sweet and he knew he'd always remember that one glass of wine and how it tasted and the way she smiled and how it changed his life.
She had three and when she giggled, her arms slipping around his neck with that look in her eyes, he couldn't help but laugh and pull her closer to him. She had told him she wasn't going to drink on the way over and that he should bask in all the glory of his accomplishments, he had simply nodded, handed her the keys and grabbed that one glass of wine as a server walked by, he held throughout the evening.
He laughed when she handed back the keys at one point in the evening, her green eyes twinkling when she leaned in, her lips brushing against his ear that it had been Brooke and Haley's fault. They were bored after all she had said teaseling, a smile on her face.
One of the few real ones she wore that evening.
One that he found himself memorizing and the way she looked as she leaned back, her eyes bright and those blonde locks flowing down her back. He told himself to burn it in his mind, to remember it for another time for deep down, something whispered to him he'd be clinging to this moment and every one that he had memorized throughout their lives together.
He held her to side after saying their goodbyes to their friends and he received another congratulator pat on the back from his editors and she smiled that smile he adored with pride in her eyes.
And he wondered once again how he had gotten so lucky as to have her loving him.
Her arm slipped around his waist, her words low, soft, barely a whisper as they slowly made their way through the parking lot and he told himself to remember that moment and those words and the way her eyes shone in the moonlight when he pressed a hand to her cheek before she slipped into the car, her fingers trailing down his arm before gently grasping his hand in hers with a gentle squeeze.
Bliss that was all he could think as he pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road moments later, her hand in his as he stirred the car through the familiar roads of their hometown and back home to their daughter; pure bliss.
That's all that crossed his mind as she held his hand and he drove that old car down those old familiar roads.
At her whispered words of love you he turned to smile, his gaze shifting momentarily from the road to her. An action he'd done a thousand times before that turned into one he wished he had never done as headlights bore down on them, his head jerking back to the road, her hand tightening it's hold, her nails digging into his palm and a gasp of his name escaped her lips, so soft that for the rest of his life, he'd wonder if he had imagined it.
Squealing brakes and crunching metal filled the night air and all he could see was the night, their life flash before him just before he was propelled forward and the world spun around before the car came to rest upside and he sought for her hand in the darkness and found nothing.
With a groan, he pulled himself from the crumpled car, limping to a standing position and slowly walked around what use to be the front of the car, his eyes scanning the scene, oblivious to the blood that covered his face and the faint stinging sensation in his right hand.
All he saw, laying in the moonlight, was her hand extended from passenger side of the crumpled car, her eyes open staring straight ahead and all he could think was; It was just one glass and she was his wife.
He wants to be angry. Angry at her, at life, at himself but he can't and he can't stop starring at the flickering flame of those candles he had lit hours before.
They were hers, purchased the day before that night and burned once, until now.
He had watched her that night, the one before that night his world changed, as she lay soaking in the tub, her eyes closed, The Cure's Pictures of You, faintly playing in the background and those candles flickering in the darkening room.
She had sensed him and he knew from the way her lips curved upward and her eyes fluttered open, the candlelight shining in her eyes and that look that told him she'd loved him and always would.
But she couldn't do that anymore, look at him that way nor tell him how she loved candlelight and him and their life because she was gone and all that was left behind was emptiness, a hole that just didn't feel right.
And he just couldn't understand how he was here and she wasn't.
He had clung to her, cradling her head on his lap, his hand grasping hers, begging her to squeeze it, her name soft on his lips until Nathan pulled him from her. Telling him to let paramedic's do their job.
He had fought his hold, his cries filling the night air until that moment the paramedic looked his way with a look that silenced his cries and caused his heart to break into a thousands pieces.
When the ambulance pulled away, it's lights silently flashing, he had fallen to his knees, his head falling to his chest and that ache he felt once so long ago, crept over him and swept through his soul.
She was gone and he was alone.
He hadn't cried. Not when Brooke wrapped her arms around him, her tears soaking his shirt, her words faint, asking him why. Not even when Haley's glistening eyes met his in the dim moonlight, her name falling from her lips through a broken sob. Nor when Nathan silently led him to the back of his car and drove the streets of Tree Hill back to their home.
Back to their daughter and a life that suddenly seemed huge and empty and cold without her. He didn't cry. Not one tear.
And he didn't cry now, sitting there watching those flickering flames with thoughts of her playing in his mind.
Thoughts, memories he wanted to bury himself in and forget all at once.
With a sigh he slowly stood, the bed creaking from his movement and made his way out of their bedroom and down the hall, his eyes drifting to the couch where Sawyer laid sleeping. Her golden curls covering her face. Curls he once told Peyton he wanted their child to have; a child that would look just like her.
That's what she was, Sawyer, the spitting image of her mother. Right down to those emerald eyes, eyes he knew would now be just as haunted.
She had clung to him. His words had faded at the sound of her cries. Words he couldn't believe himself and yet he played them in his mind as he held their daughter in his arms, trying to tell himself to believe them. One small arm had wrapped tightly around his neck, the other clasping his hand in hers as her faint cries for a woman they both needed, wanted, filled his head.
He had held her until she drifted to sleep in his arms before carefully disentangled himself from her grip, needing to escape.
Needing to find her.
Needing to find the peace she gave and failing.
That had been hours ago and now, as he stood there watching their daughter sleep, that emptiness, that ache he felt, grew and he needed to escape all over again.
Turning away from her sleeping form, he slipped back down the hall and into bathroom. It was dim and silent and it still smelled like her, vanilla and lavender. Like she had just been there, showering, bathing, and getting ready for the day.
But she hadn't. It had been a mere twelve hours since she stood on those tiles, telling him she didn't feel well with her brush in hand and her eyes meeting his in the mirror, all with a faint smile on her lips. He had tried to convince her to stay home but she had only turned, pressed a hand to his cheek and told him, with a teasing smile, a few hours out with him wouldn't kill her.
If only she knew, he thought, his eyes scanning the room, his vision blurring when he caught sight of that book, his latest, laying on the edge of the sink where she had left it hours before. With shaky hands he picked it up and gently ran a hand over it's cover, following a path he knew hers had taken. He had seen her do it all with a faint smile on her lips before she glanced up at his eyes with, her own glistening with tears he knew were happy ones.
You used it, she had said. It was a picture of them; Sawyer, her and him blurred for the world but she knew those shapes, those forms and that place and he could only smile her way before she launched herself into his arms, whispering how she'd love him for eternity and a day.
And now, standing, leaning against the sink, he wondered how eternity only lasted fifteen years.
He sat there for hours, on that floor with that book in his hands, her scent engulfing him in memories he wanted to loose himself in.
She was there. Embedded in the walls of that room and all the others. She was captured in the frames that lined the hallway and the eyes of their daughter. She was there.
And yet she wasn't and that thought, at that moment made breathing hard and the tears to come.
He cried. Cried like he hadn't in years, his head falling to hands as sobs racked his body until there were no tears to cry and the numbness he'd been craving, washed over him.
Letting out a shaking breath, his gaze landing on a forgotten crayon tucked in the corner of the bathroom. His eyes closed as a memory of Sawyer sitting on top of the closed toilet, paper in hand drawing as Peyton sat soaking in the tub, watching their daughter with utter contentment. He had watched them, hidden in the shadows of the hall, a smile of his own and an overwhelming feeling of love washing over him at the way Sawyer looked.
Her tongue sticking out slightly, her blonde curls hanging loosing across her face and Peyton's voice softly drifted through the room each time Sawyer held that drawing up for her mother's inspection.
Now he reached for that crayon, opened that book to the dedication; To my heart, my soul…My everything, it read and his breath hitched at those words.
They had made her cry. Made her cling to his shirt, her fist clenching so tightly to him that her knuckles had gone white and he did the only thing he knew to stop those tears, to reinsure her they were true, he kissed her and she cried harder.
With a deep breathe, he pressed that crayon to that page and began to write.
"She loved music."
Because that's what he did, he wrote. He was a writer.
"She loved art."
And those tears, he thought were gone, fell all over again.
"Her eyes were green, dotted with speaks of gold."
A tear fell, hitting the page and blurring those words and he continued to write.
"She loved me. She loved Sawyer and we loved her."
That crayon flew across that page, line after line, and memory after memory.
He wrote how she smelled and how she clung to him for no reason at all. He wrote how he loved the way she'd blushed when he'd tell her she was beautiful. He put those words to paper, words like unforgettable, strong, brave…his.
That's where Haley found him, hours later when the sun had begun to set, frantically writing her down
Putting words to paper before he could forget because forgetting her would be the worst thing he could ever do.
